The Change

Posted on Thu Jan 25th, 2024 @ 1:41pm by Ellie Evans & Jamie Bullock & Damien McGinnis & Kilena Keithron & Spencer Gustaffson & Valdana 'Dan' Raadax

2,485 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: The Secret of Corvus
Location: Megaship Infirmary
Timeline: January 5th 2051

Kilena awoke with a start, the taste of defeat lingering on her lips. The scorching winds of the desert planet she last remembered now replaced by the metallic hum of the Megaship. Confusion clouded her vision as she found herself in the ship's infirmary, her teammates still unconscious in nearby beds but there was some something from wrong with just seeing Damien, Valdana, Ellie, Spencer and Jamie. It felt like people were missing but she had no idea who it was.

As she sat up, the memories flooded back – missing to rescue the archeological team, the battle to stop the figures d cult from getting whatever it wanted from the planet and then the overwhelming power that had overtaken them. But how did they all get back there? Almost as if answer her question Melody came into the room and the ships camera blinked several times at the pink ranger.

“Pink ranger I am glad to see that you are awake. Mistress gave me strict instructions to keep and eye on you all and activate emergency rescue procedures if you became incapacitated.” Melody revealed.

"Emergency rescue procedures?" Damien groaned as he slowly came round, shielding his eyes from the bright light "What the hell happened? The last thing I remember... I don't, actually."

He froze in place for a minute. He couldn't remember what had happened. He remembered being in a fight with some clock looking monster and his helmet being shredded. He remembered the feel of the scorching desert sun on his face, the feel of the cloak he'd initially worn being pulled off of him as his cover was blown, but he didn't remember what had happened on the planet.

"Sit rep." He said as he stood up, struggling to find his balance "What the hell happened down there? It's like... They knew we were coming, but that doesn't compute at all. We gave no warning, hell, we had no warning we were going. How the hell did they know?!"

He froze, realising he was shouting at the end. Like the drill sergeant types he'd always hated so much at the Academy. He shook his head, slamming both hands down on the console in front of him and taking a deep breath.

"Let's recap." He said, looking around to Kilena and then Melody before observing the unconscious forms of the rest of the team "What do we know?"

Spencer woke up in a hospital, or something that passed for one. Sadly, it wasn't the first time in his life that he'd had that experience. He heard a voice say something about 'emergency rescue procedures'. He looked around and realized - the only ones there were Orange, Black, Red, Green, and Pink, aside from himself. He started to test his muscles, making sure that everything was in the right places. For the most part, that seemed to be the case. He wasn't missing a finger or an arm, his legs and feet were there, and he could move and feel. It might have seemed silly if people saw him going through the exercises; he didn't care. Making sure he wasn't missing anything and wasn't paralyzed was his first priority. His second was the fact that Keon and Julian were missing. As he fully came to, he heard Damien trying to talk it out, but it sounded like mindless chattering for the moment, until he sat up and heard the words 'what do we know?'.

He looked straight at Damien, who was obviously upset and had gotten more injured than the rest of the team. "Right now, what I know is, you absolutely need to sit down. You're very liable to hurt yourself if you don't. I also know that we're down two Rangers. Two more corpses, and two more reasons that the government were right to make these abilities illegal. Whatever those alien bastards were doing, we got caught in it, and it went bad before we could do anything. I also know that we need to get a report about what the hell is going o down there - and then we need to report to GPF Command and wait for further orders."

"Both of you can stop yelling at me,,,," Kilena started as she looked between the two males rangers and noticed that Ellie was coming to between the unconscious orange and black rangers.

"Easy now," Ellie protested, not appreciative of Spencer's very direct-sounding tone in that moment. She rubbed her head as she sat up in the bed. "Nobody is to blame here yet. But if our friends are missing then we should be looking for them. They can't be just...gone..." Her eyes looked around the room for familiarity; it was strange, like waking from a dream and trying to recall details. She knew that there were other rangers...but what colours? And what were their names? It was as if the knowledge was slipping away as each second passed. And that was deeply unsettling.

Melody clicked a couple of times before the bot finally decided the time was right to speak up now that the male rangers had gotten what was wrong out of their systems.

"Before you started yelling young masters I was about to tell the Pink Ranger that the cult has gotten ahold of a time crystal and has used it to subtly change the past," Melody said bringing up the scans that she had been working on since the rangers had been out of it. "You are remembering that there were differences as you were at the epicentre of the explosion but that will begin to fade even for the pink ranger who has a time-related ability. Your mind and body will adjust to the new time stream."

Valdana had laid till for a very long moment listening back and further to the harsh tons and words before she finally decided to sit up relieved that she still had gloves on and that things were slowly becoming less shouty and calmer as it sunk in. "That makes sense." She finally broke the silence.

"A time crystal?" Damien asked indignantly "What is this, an old 1960s science fiction show? Or a dark, gritty reboot of one..."

Spencer turned toward Kilena and sighed as he fully sat up. His expression was exasperated, there was some aspect of a wild animal trapped in a cage about his movements. "I'm not yelling; and if I am without hearing it, it's not directed at anyone."

He looked at Val and had to stop himself from really expressing his frustrations, closing his eyes for a moment before shaking his head. "Please, explain how any of that makes sense to you. Maybe when you get through that, I'll agree. Right now, the only thing that makes sense to me is that we're in way over our heads and people are getting hurt for it. And I don't know how to fix that." He started to look down and decided that was a bad idea, holding himself stiffly as he sat upright.

"It makes perfect sense. It's logical when you think about it. We were in the middle of a time storm." She got up looked better at the monitor and nodded as Kilena agreed with it all.

"You cannot fix it and no one is getting hurt. Those other rangers never existed for us in this timeline. They were never rangers. Can you tell me truthfully that unless you concentrate hard on them you can even remember them?" Kilena asked. She had a time ability but even that was not even helping her right now. "Look even the ship only recognises the people here as crew."

"She's right." Damien spoke up "Whoever was aboard previously can't be a consideration in this. Our history, our world, has been changed. We need to find a way to ensure that during the next battle, all of us are protected from the temporal anomalies, because I don't know about any of you, but I like existing."

Spencer went quiet as he considered the situation, eyes closed and thinking. He looked at Kilena without saying anything, and then over at Damien with a nod in agreement. "I like existing too, yes." He looked over at Kilena after that quick statement, his voice calmer and more gentle than it had been in his panic. He wasn't relaxed or soft-spoken, but he also wasn't speaking loudly and panicking anymore. "It's more like a feeling that there's a hole where those Rangers should be, more than who they are. If I don't think about it, you're right, it's not the people that are missing. But the... whatever it's called, the Grid I guess, is saying that we should have someone with those powers. That'll pass in time maybe; or we'll find the right people. Kinda hoping the latter, because it sucks having a feeling of being nagged at by something or somebody I don't understand."

The blue ranger looked down and took a deep breath, nodding as he shifted his lower body while exhaling, sitting on the edge of the bed as he tested his legs. He was almost ready to stand up, but not quite; he'd obviously taken a heck of a hit. Unlike Damien, he didn't have the kind of luck that would keep him on his feet prematurely. "Since we all like existing, let's make sure we keep up that habit, right? So, where are we currently? Are there any Kaldor ships in sensor range? Do we have contact with HQ? What changes happened on Earth? After we figure all that out, I agree with Damien, we need to figure out how to protect ourselves from that kind of attack. I know my preferred solution of 'go punch the bad guy' doesn't sound like it will work."

He turned fully toward the robot, Melody, as he blinked purposefully, obviously having had an important realization. "And, uh, Melody, wasn't it? The zords - how many are currently onboard, and what colors are they?"

"You have known me 2 months blue ranger but yes my name is Melody. I am a modified mu..." Melody started to chastise the man.

"Melody the zords," Valadana spoke up cutting across what was going to be a rant from her robot. She might seem like a simple robot to others but Valdana knew she was so much more.

The robot tutted and looked at the orange ranger's determined look before looking back at the blue ranger. "There are currently five zords onboard corresponding to the rangers that are currently in this room." She explained and showed the cargo bay.

"Well, at least that's a Megazord." Damien noted "Otherwise, we'd be in a hell of a lot of trouble. Now, plan of attack." He looked around the room, pausing. He was clearly hoping someone would chime in with an idea. Finally, he relented.

"Okay, so we know that our Ranger suits don't protect us from the time crystal stuff." He said "That means that morphing, while giving us a tactical edge, won't help us if we get zapped. Therefore, we need to take a different tact. Move more and get hit less. Do everything you can to avoid the enemy attacks making contact. Next part, we need to make sure we separate the crystal from the creature using it so they can't try to wipe anyone else out. Final part, we need to recover the dig team. Any questions?"

Kilena stayed quiet it was always her coming up with ideas or thoughts around it all even though she did have some thoughts on it all.

"I do have a couple of questions.... one why are they keeping the dig team? Times changed things have changed so why are they still being held? I think the creature needs them to power himself or the crystal." Kilena spoke up. "And secondly we need to find out what exactly has changed to shift things." It was no good charging in if they had no idea what had changed.

"If years of watching old movies with my Dad taught me anything, it's that messing with time is tricky." Damien replied "Realistically, if the dig team weren't there, they couldn't have got the crystal meaning the creature couldn't have it to alter the timeline, meaning the changes go away. Don't you love paradoxes?"

Spencer looked at Melody with a nonplussed expression at first, but nodded when she confirmed that they had a Megazord available. Before he could say anything, Damien confirmed what he'd already been thinking. Damien was looking for a battle plan, but Spencer was fresh out. He knew his first ideas wouldn't work, and all he wanted to do was find out what was going on back on Earth. Spencer thought for a moment, closing his eyes - there was something there, outside himself, a center that he couldn't reach yet. He'd only really touched it in his sleep; but couldn't remember how or exactly why. "I agree with moving more and getting hit less, yeah. I still have two important questions before we mobilize. We know the timeline was changed. We may be the only people who do. Do we know how Earth was affected? Do we still have allies? Can we tell them what we experienced?"

Kilena nodded as it was a similar thread of thought as she had been having. They needed to know the who, what and where of what had changed personally as well as the bigger issue of the universe. "Why we need to know what has changed so we...." She mumbled trailing off as she looked down at the strange weight on her hand that was not her morpher and noticed a human wedding ring. What? When had she gotten married? And the bigger question was who had she married? "...do not make mistakes in the new timeline or anything." She finished but she sounded confused.

"Okay, so we need to make sure we go through the database." Damien said with a shrug "Logically speaking, that will display everyone's personal history and what's gone on. Oh god, is this what I sound like in this timeline... I don't like it, change it back."

Spencer finally stood up, and looked between the others. The thought of the timeline change concerned him. After all, his background, his memories, mattered to him. What would he do if his parents were alive in this timeline? He didn't even know them. "Yes. We absolutely need to find out what's changed." He raised an eyebrow at Damien. "You still sound normal to me; at least when you actually want to lead. Now, let's get to the database."

"Assuming you all remember where the database is." Ellie shrugged. "I don't think I remembered even before the timeline got changed."

Jamie put a hand on her shoulder. "Some things definitely haven't changed. Come on, let's go."

 

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